Chicago is endowed with a large number of beautiful and expensive downtown neighborhoods, but only one single Block Group in the middle of Lincoln Park has a mean household income that is high enough to make the Higley 1000. Even the Lincoln Park block that was christened the “wealthiest block in Chicago” by Forbes Magazine in August of 2007, does not qualify for the Higley 1000. As the block in question has only recently undergone widespread demolition to make way for the construction of multi-lot pleasure palaces for our new Gilded Age, it will undoubtedly make the list after the 2010 Census.

Forbes may salivate over the nouveau mansions of Lincoln Park, but any self respecting Chicagoan knows that the real center of Chicago’s elite is found in the Gold Coast. The luxurious single block of East Lake Shore Drive, North Lake Shore Drive from Oak Street to North Avenue, and Astor Street are unquestionably the most elite of the city’s neighborhoods. Surprisingly, the Block Group that covers this area does not have a high enough mean household income ($180,093) to qualify for the Higley 1000.

The reason for this relatively “low” mean household income in the Gold Coast is found in the very density and complexity associated with urban neighborhoods. For every condominium tower that features multi-million dollar units in this area, there are massive high rises that bring the mean household income down to more pedestrian levels. For those familiar with Chicago, 1350, 1360, and 1400 Lake Shore Drive are examples of massive rental-turned-condo high rises’ that subvert the mean household incomes of this plush neighborhood.

Racial Integration in Chicago’s Central Neighborhoods

Defining the geographical boundaries of Chicago’s central neighborhoods is a challenge to any Geographer since the city’s rich history of urban sociological research has resulted in many definitions. After much research using Census Tracts and Block Group boundaries, I have settled on the eleven neighborhoods found on the map below.

A Map of Chicago’s Central Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the City of Chicago

The Racial Makeup of the Neighborhoods

City of Chicago Neighborhoods Racial Makeup

The racial makeup of the City of Chicago households at the time of the 2000 Census was 42.0% Non-Hispanic White, 33.8% African-American, 17.9% Latino, and 4.2% Asian. The eleven wealthy central neighborhoods are radically different in racial makeup: 83.4% White, 5.7% Black, 3.5% Latino, and 5.7% Asian. Although there are significant differences among the elite central city neighborhoods, none of them come close to matching the racial diversity of the rest of the city.

I have rank ordered the neighborhoods by populations starting with the very large Lincoln Park Neighorhood. Lincoln Park has over 40% of all of the households in my sample and although it has many sub-neighborhoods (e.g. Sheffield Neighbors, the Old Town Triangle), I have chosen to lump them in one unit. Lincoln Park is only slightly more integrated than Chicago’s elite suburbs on the North Shore. A mere 2.5% of Lincoln Park’s households are African-American. The only city neighborhood that has a lower percentage is the Gold Coast (2.4% African-American).

It is interesting that the four central city neighborhoods that have the largest percentage of African-American households are relatively “new”. The Dearborn Park neighborhood was 30.1% African-American in 2000. Dearborn Park was built just south of the Loop in two phases (1977 and 1988). Although the percentage of African-Americans is high compared to other central city neighborhoods, it is important to remember that this neighborhood is quite small.

River West (13.4% Black) and River North (12.1%) are new loft neighborhoods that have been created out old factories and and office buildings as well as new high rise construction. The neighborhood that is sometimes referred to as Lake Shore East consists solely of high rises, most of which have been built within the last 20 years.

Two neighborhoods that have a significant number of Asian households are Streeterville, a high rise neighborhood along the lake, East of Michigan Avenue (13.4% Asian) as well as the aforementioned “new” loft neighborhood of River West (10.3%).

The only neighborhood with a significant Latino presence is the Loop (9.5%). At the time of the 2000 Census, there were few households in Chicago’s central business district as only 1,025 were counted. Since the last Census, office conversions and new construction have changed the face of the Loop with a much wider array of housing choices.

As to whether all of the new high rises. lofts, and townhouses will significantly alter the racial makeup of Chicago’s central neighborhoods will be of great interest. Virtually all of the new construction is at the high end of the market, most notably the 1,200 unit, 2,000 foot Chicago Spire under construction in Streeterville. The Higley1000 sends its condolences to the real estate agents trying to sell 1,200 units that run up to $45 million in this market! Where are those Russian Oligarchs when you need them?

Chicago has always been famous for its skyline and no small plans are in the offing. Trump’s new 1,362 foot tower is nearing completion on the Chicago River and ground was recently broken on the Chicago Spire, a 2,000 foot tall condominium tower. With 1,200 units to sell in a difficult market, it will be interesting to see if Santiago Calatrava’s tour de force will rise from Lake Shore Drive. For a wonderful tour of this spectacular tower click here: The Chicago Spire. If completed, the Spire will be the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Dubai (2,625 feet) currently under construction in Abu Dhabi.

Before I sound too much like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Chicago does have its fair quotient of the typical ills affecting large American cities: endemic poverty, racial strife, a nasty problem with police corruption, and the usual dreadful public school system. MCIC, a Chicago research and consulting organization terms 22 of the 77 recognized city neighborhoods as either “Emerging Low Income” or in the worst category “Desertification”.. swathes of despair amidst a generally improving city.

On a brighter note, the city, somewhat imperfectly, tackles its problems head on under the able and popular lead of Mayor Daley, a man that may have some flaws, but all would agree has the best interests of his beloved city at heart. Yes, I am a totally biased observer of Chicago. I have seen the city bloom before my very eyes over the last 36 years from dreary and tired to exciting and new.

City vs. Suburb

As typical of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest, the city of Chicago has dramatically lost population from the heights of its industrial heyday. Locked into a mere 224 square miles, the population has dropped from 3,620,962 in 1950 to 2,783,726 in 1990. After a rally in the 90s to 2,896,016, it is again on the decline as the Census has estimated the city’s population at 2,833,321 in 2006.

In that same period of time the population of the suburbs, with no limits to there physical growth, have increased from 1,874,402 (1950) to 6,691,996 (2006). Chicagoland’s Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area now stretches from Wisconsin’s Kenosha County on the North to Kankakee County in the South and well into Indiana to the Southeast.

There has been a strikingly divergence in the suburbanization among racial groups. The 2000 Census showed that Non-Hispanic Whites have suburbanized the most with 79.7% of households found beyond the city limits, whereas 63.5% of Asians, 47.5% Of Hispanics, and 37.2% of African-Americans are suburbanites.

When one looks at the city/suburb contrasts of the wealthiest households (over $200,000 mean household income), the numbers shed some light on the paucity of wealthy Blacks and Hispanics found in the suburbs. No less than 83.4% of the wealthiest category of Asian households have moved out of the city. This percentage is even greater than 79.8% the $200,000+ Non-Hispanic Whites that have left the city. Wealthy Latino (55.4%) and Black households (47.8%) are much less likely to have moved out of the city.

Racial Patterns in the Higley 1000 Neighborhoods of Chicago

There are 70 Chicago neighborhoods in the Higley 1000. Sixty-nine of these are in the suburbs as only one Block Group is found in the city in Lincoln Park. Even the core of the Gold Coast, Chicago’s most exclusive neighborhood, did not have a high enough mean household income to be included in the list. This is another case where the homogeneity of the suburbs triumphs the diversity of city life, even in the most gilded precints.

There were 45,587 households found in these most elite of suburban neighborhoods of Chicago. The racial breakdown: 93.3% Non-Hispanic White, 4.0% Asian, 1.1% Hispanic, and 0.9% African-American. Asian-Americans are heavily clustered in Oak Brook, a nouveau riche suburb in the Western suburbs of Du Page County. Oak Brook is famous for two things in Chicago: the headquarters of McDonalds and polo.

There are three main clusters of suburban wealth in the Chicago area: the North Shore, the Barrington Area, and the West Suburban area. There are separate postings on the Barrington Area and the West Suburban area of Chicago centered on Hinsdale and Oak Brook.

Two neighborhoods are found in the South Suburban area: Flossmoor Country Club and a neighborhood just South of the Prestwick Country Club in Frankfort. I have a word on the South Suburban area at the end of the West Suburban article.

The North Shore

View a Larger Map of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in North Shore Chicago

As every Chicagoan knows, the North Shore of Chicago is where the true movers and shakers of suburban of power and influence reside. Sheridan Road is the gateway to a sumptuous swathe of suburbia that bursts out Chicago’s East Rodger Park neighborhood and sweeps around lakeside Calvary Cemetery into Evanston. After a couple of blocks of preliminary apartments in the Oakton neighborhood of Southern Evanston, Sheridan Road bursts into Evanston’s gorgeous 19th Century mansions that are sprinkled with just about every imaginable style of residential architecture from Victorian Gothic to Modernist. Sheridan Road proceeds 27 miles north through the suburban communities that are the epitome old Social Register families and the nouveau riche alike: Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, and Lake Forest to name a few. The parade of wealth ends abruptly just past the Shoreline Country Club in Lake Bluff in impoverished North Chicago, a largely African-American community that is home to the Great Lakes Naval Station.

The heavily wooded ravines and dramatic bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan are dotted with the mansions of Chicago’s elite. As I chronicled in my book, Power, Privilege, and Place: The Geography of the American Upper Class, Lake Forest near the northern end of Sheridan Road has the largest number of Social Register families, distantly followed by Winnetka. The Onwentsia Club in the center of Lake Forest is at the heart of North Shore society.

View Larger Map of Indian Hill Club neighborhood

The wealthiest neighborhood in Chicago is the Indian Hill Club-Woodley Road neighborhood that lies partly in Southern Winnetka and a small patch of unincorporated New Trier Township. With a mean household income of $459,070, this sylvan patch of suburban bliss is ranked 5th in the Higley 1000. Although the Woodley Road enclave is marked “Private, Residents only”, this researcher was able to make a pass through unmolested by the authorities.

Of Chicago’s 70 neighborhoods found in the Higley 1000, 39 are found on the North Shore. The racial makeup is overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White (95.3%) and there are few neighborhoods with significant Asian populations except a couple of areas in western Northbrook near the Tri-State Tollway. Northbrook is a second tier suburb in that is has no lakefront and is generally less affluent. The neighborhoods of Stonebrook-Woodmere (12.2% Asian) is the only place on the North Shore that showed any racial diversity in the 2000 Census.

The White population of the North Shore is not technically WASP in the sense that people of English ancestry dominate. WASPs make up only 22.1% of Kenilworth’s population and as low as 10.7% of the population in heavily Jewish Glencoe. The two largest ethnic groups found on the North Shore are Irish and German. One of the reasons why one can see so many blondes driving BMWs may have something to do with the rather large numbers of people of Scandinavian and Dutch ancestry that live in the area (around 10%).

In Conclusion

Chicago’s wealthiest suburban neighborhoods are heavily clustered on the North Shore where 39 of Chicago’s 70 Higley 1000 neighborhoods are located. The expansion of this elite slice of Chicagoland is blocked to the north by poor North Chicago and blue-collar Waukegan and has expanded to the West towards the old farming town of Barrington in southern Lake County. As is typical of the largest of American cities, there is more than one sector of high income growth and Chicago is no different. To the West there is a substantial cluster of wealthy neighborhoods centered on old money Hinsdale and nouveau riche Oak Brook. The southern suburbs have faced a decline in socio-economic status over the last 35 years as they have become increasingly African-American. It is important to remember that these neighborhoods are still beautiful, they just have not kept up with the Jones!

The West Suburban cluster of neighborhoods is centered on Oak Brook and Hinsdale. They are the odd couple of Chicago’s suburbs. Hinsdale (the Felix Unger of the two) is older, gracious and stately. Hinsdale’s lovely tree lined streets have been the site of a teardown demolition derby over the last 20 years with the usual local outcry. The two most elite neighborhoods of Hinsdale are the adjacent neighborhoods of Southeast Section and The Woodlands.

Oak Brook is the Oscar Madison of this duo. Oak Brook is the brain child of Paul Butler, the scion of a family that owned a large amount of land where the suburb sits today. The Butler name graces one of the suburbs many golf courses, an elementary school, and a polo ground, Oak Brook is a collection of gated communities and is the most desirable destination for Asians-Americans in the Chicago area. The gated nouveau riche development dubbed The Midwest Club is 40.1% Asian. The similar development of Trinity Lakes is 37.4% Asian. Both have among the highest concentration of wealthy Asians in the United States. The architecture of these neighborhoods tends to the ostentatious McMansion variety (an appropriate allusion as Oak Brook is the site of McDonald’s Corporate Headquarters and Hamburger University). The entire city of Oak Brook was 20.1% Asian (2000 Census). It is interesting that of Oak Brook’s Asian population, 52.5% are Indian and 20.6% are Chinese. Philippinos make up an additional 10.5% if Oak Brook’s population.

Burr Ridge answers the Question of “Where to Build your McMansion when Oak Brook is Built-out?”

Don’t want to teardown a house in Hinsdale or Clarendon Hills? But still want to build that 10,000 square foot trophy house? Burr Ridge is the place for you! The two neighborhoods of Burr Ridge in the Higley 1000 have relatively large Asian populations. Palisades-Oakridge Estates is 14.6% Asian and Devon-Lakewood is 15.7% Asian.

Map of Burr Ridge

View Larger Map of Palisades-Oak Ridge & Devon-Lakewood Neighborhoods

The appearance that wealthy Asians are attracted to gated developments of new homes in the suburbs provides an interesting future research topic for urban geographers.

The 17 neighborhoods in the West Suburban cluster were 86.2% Non-Hispanic Whites and 10.0% Asian. Black (1.6%) and Hispanic (1.2%) household numbers are insignificant. There were 7,470 households in this cluster or 16.4% of Chicago’s Higley 1000 total households.

Beyond the core Hinsdale-Oak Brook cluster there are several noteworthy West Suburban outliers. One of this author’s favorites is River Forest’s central section, a neighborhood graced by eclectic homes from the early parts of the 20th Century. Formerly the favorite of solid citizens as well as Mafia dons, River Forest’s homes have been lovingly maintained. Many of the homes in River Forest have been remodeled and expanded as the downside of the eclectic architecture of the Twenties are small bathrooms, small closets, and small kitchens.

Map of River Forest and Oak Park’s Frank Lloyd Wright Neighborhood

View Larger Map of River Forest Central and Frank Lloyd Wright Neighborhood

Oak Park: A Frank Lloyd Wright Tour de Force

Another noteworthy neighborhood that just missed the Higley 1000 is the core of a collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes in Oak Park. The Block Group that has the Wright homes had a mean household income of $184,868 in 2000, placing it 1004th in the nation.

One may take a variety of tours sponsored by the Frank Lloyd Wright Association located on the Southern edge of this neighborhood. Although Oak Park has a fairly large African-American population, few are found in the Frank Lloyd Wright neighborhood.

Map of the Concentration of African-Americans in Oak Park, Illinois (Block by Block Basis)

In the late Sixties, Oak Park became the center of controversy when the city began a reverse steering program as realtors were trained to steer newly arriving African-Americans to Non-Hispanic White neighborhoods through the Oak Park Housing Center. In spite of the best efforts of the city, Blacks remain clustered in apartment buildings along the city’s Eastern border with Chicago, Austin Boulevard. Although the city as a whole was 22.4% Black in the 2000 Census, the Frank Lloyd Wright neighborhood had a mere 1.7% African-American households.

South Suburban Chicago

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in South Suburban Chicago

There are only two Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the southern half of Chicagoland: the area around the Flossmoor Country Club and a subdivision adjacent to the Prestwick Country Club in exurban Frankfort. The households around the Flossmoor Country Club were 17.1% Black in the 2000 Census, the highest percentage in the Chicago area by quite a large degree. The second largest percentage of African-Americans (6.3%) is found in the small West Suburban Oak Brook subdivision of Ginger Creek.

I came across an interesting Chicago Sun-Times article from the archives (August 15, 1972) that listed the status of 200 Chicago suburbs by ranking them on four statistics: percentage college graduates; percentage of families with incomes over $25,000 (that’s not a typo!); median family income; and median years of school. What is striking about the listing is that Olympia Fields, a suburb just south of Flossmoor was ranked 4th and Flossmoor was ranked 7th.

By the 2000 Census, there were no neighborhoods in Olympia Fields in the Higley 1000. The Olympia Fields Country Club neighborhood is 51.9% Black, however with a mean household income of $133,210, it would not be in qualify for the second thousand wealthiest neighborhoods. Graymoor is a small subdivision to the east of the Olympia Fields Country Club and has a mean household income of $169,321. Graymoor’s 143 households were 35.6% Black in the 2000 Census. It is always important to remember that the margin of error in very small neighborhoods is wide. It is also important to remember that the reason I have chosen to make the data base 1,000 neighborhoods strong was to counteract this problem.

One could almost consider the Barrington Area as an annex to the North Shore. New upscale development was blocked to the north along the lakefront by downscale North Chicago and Waukegan, therefore it moved west. The Barrington area (as I have defined it) stretches from Long Grove on the east to Barrington Hills in the west and is located primarily on the rolling meadows and forests of southern Lake County. This area, with a few exceptions, is nouveau riche and filled with upscale subdivisions of McMansions.

The Barrington name has cache and has proliferated across the landscape in a series of separately incorporated suburbs: North Barrington, South Barrington, Lake Barrington, Barrington Hills, and the original little farming community that started it all, Barrington itself. The lower-middle class suburb of Hoffman Estates even briefly entertained renaming itself East Barrington at one point to gain some illusory prestige.

Although the wealthiest neighborhood in the Barrington area is the gated Wynstone Golf Course community, the reigning dowager of wealth and old money is Barrington Hills. Wynstone consists of huge new homes built around a Jack Nicklaus designed golf course in the village of North Barrington. The fact that Wynstone has a significantly higher mean household income than Barrington Hills, is yet another example of how parvenu homogeneity can trump old money diversity in the Higley 1000.

If Wynstone’s passion is golf, Barrington Hills is equestrian paradise. The suburb is huge and its 28 square miles covers four counties. The population is only 4,000 due to extensive public park lands and five acre zoning throughout the village. The Riding Club of Barrington Hills and the Fox River Valley Pony Club are local institutions and horses are the focal point of many of the residents lives. It is quite amazing that there is no country club in the corporate limits of Barrington Hills.

View Larger Map of Barrington Hills neighborhood

There are 11 Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the Barrington area with 21.1% of the suburban Chicago households. Similarly to the North Shore, the population is overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White (93.1%). The only suburb in the Barrington area that has any racial diversity at all is South Barrington. This suburb, which seems to be a favorite of sports stars, has a relatively large percentage of Asian households (14.4%), however the 11 neighborhoods together have only 4.3% Asian householders. Like the North Shore, the number of Blacks and Hispanics is statistically insignificant.

Birmingham has indeed come a long way in its relatively brief history. Born in the aftermath of the Civil War (1871), the city quickly burgeoned into the iron and steel industry’s “Pittsburgh of the South” by the early 20th Century. The city’s explosive growth in its first forty years earned it the nickname of the “Magic City”. Although it soon became the state’s largest city, Birmingham has always been considered a brash industrial upstart by the more genteel antebellum cities of Mobile and Montgomery.

Birmingham’s reliance on the iron and steel industry would be a curse and a blessing as dependence on one industry would lead to a boom and bust cycle throughout most of the 20th Century. During the last 20 years the steel industry has waned to secondary importance as Birmingham has pegged its future to banking and medicine.

The banking industry of Birmingham has recently succumbed to the on-going national trend in bank consolidation and three of it’s four largest banks have changed form. Southtrust was swallowed by Wachovia while Regions bought their slightly smaller rival AmSouth. The smallest of the four largest banks, Compass, retains it’s name but is now owned by a Spanish bank. Voila! There is now only one large bank headquartered in Birmingham: Regions Bank.

The University of Alabama-Birmingham’s large medical center is nationally recognized as a leader in many specialties and has been critical to the stabilization of the central city. The university itself was essentially grafted onto the medical center and has blossomed into a respectable urban university in spite of weak state support. The city also has two large Baptist hospitals and St. Vincent’s, a very large sort of Catholic hospital, and a wide array of additional hospitals scattered throughout the metro area.

The city is located in Jones Valley in the foothills of the Appalachians, and the bulk of the city limits lies in the flat lands of the valley. Upscale neighborhoods developed along the flanks of Red Mountain in the early part of the twentieth century as the city’s aristocracy escaped the industrial pollution and captured today’s panoramic views. Don’t bother looking for expensive housing north, east or west of the city; the upscale development of the metro region is found along U.S. Highway 280 to the Southeast of the city. The upscale neighborhoods in this area are very beautiful due to the rugged, heavily wooded topography. Homes are built along the sides, in the valleys and on the crests of Red, Shades, and Oak Mountains. Of course, Birmingham has no real “mountains,” but none-the-less, these three rather steep, heavily wooded Appalachian ridges make for very attractive suburbs and neighborhoods. Suburban sprawl has brought development to the flanks of a fourth Appalachian ridge, Double Oak Mountain.

Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the Greater Birmingham Metro Area

View Larger Map

Birmingham will forever be tainted by its fierce and violent resistance to racial integration. Although the city’s race relations have progressed along the lines of the rest of the nation, a social and cultural gulf between whites and blacks persists. White flight from the central city (now 73.5% black) continued at a torrid pace during the 1990s with the white population dropping from 91,000 to 58,000. This trend continues into the new Century as the American Community Survey estimates the White population at 48,000 in 2006. The Birmingham city schools are over 99% black, heralding ever more residential segregation. Social and religious life in Birmingham is almost completely segregated. Mountain Brook, easily Birmingham’s most prestigious suburb, is 98.1% Non-Hispanic white. Even Forest Park, a city neighborhood that is much more liberal than the suburbs in outlook and voting, is 96.2% Non-Hispanic white. Unfortunately, there is a latent and sometimes outright hostility between Black Birmingham and the White suburbs.

The Arrival of Hurricane Larry (Langford)

In November Birmingham began a new era with the election of Larry Langford as Mayor. Langford is a controversial character in local politics. Vainglorious and Egotistical, he started his political career as the mayor of Fairfield, a struggling, small poor Black suburb adjacent to Birmingham that is famous as the location of the formerly huge US Steel works. A man of unbounded ambition, he soon jumped to the Jefferson County Commission where he made waves and headlines by creating what may have been one of the most unusual fiascos in the annals of county governance by railroading through an amusement park with public money. He named his brainstorm Visionland and it was a disaster from the get-go. After $70 million of taxpayers money was poured into this albatross that was in a dreadful location, this money hemorrhaging loser was sold to a private developer for $5 million and rechristened Alabama Adventure. Commissioner Langford also raised the sales tax in Jefferson County to an astronomical 10% to finance a vast rebuilding of the Jefferson County school buildings.

Langford brief tenure has been a whirlwind of activity. He immediately raised taxes and “found” money to start an incredible array of initiatives that are too numerous to catalogue here. Langford plays fast and loose with the taxpayers money and may still yet be brought low by his borderline or real corruption. There was a sweetheart loan of $150,000 for dental work (sic) and other shenanigans that may be uncovered in the future.

Langford follows two terms of the well-meaning, if inert leadership of Mayor Kincaid. Langford is a man that makes no little plans and has only a vague acquaintance with the concept of follow through, so it will be an interesting high-wire act to watch. His leadership will either reinvigorate the city or end in a colossal train wreck of huge financial proportions. My money is on the train wreck. The latest laughable proposal from La La Larry is to apply for the 2020 Olympics. Seriously. I think the chances of Langford being medicated and bundled off to a mental institution is more likely to happen than a Birmingham Olympics.

One notable and timely Langford intervention has been in the local “mass transit system”. I use quotation marks in that what passes for mass transit in Birmingham is a joke. The local bus system is an embarrassment and Langford has found money for 100 new buses and 8 antique trolley cars that Prague, Czech Republic is trying to unload on the rubes of Alabama. Fortunately, the city council decided the street cars might have to wait and that harebrained scheme seems to have been put to rest.

 Whether it is a bus system that actually works, or some other combination mass transit system, a source of dedicated revenue is necessary beyond sales tax increases. Sales taxes, in all of there regressive glory, are the only venue open to raising in Alabama without going through the completely corrupt Alabama state legislature. At 10% through much of the metro area, they have been raised to the breaking point.

Taxes are the third rail of Alabama politics. No matter how horrible the schools are, no matter how inhumane the prisons, no matter how many federal court orders castigate the wretched public services of Alabama, Republicans and “Democrats” will not raise taxes in any meaningful way. One must remember that the difference between Republicans and Democrats in Alabama is negligible and laughable: they are both hard core right-wing conservative. There is nary a Liberal or Progressive thought to be heard in what is possibly the most reactionary state in the country. The voters have made themselves loud and clear on the issue of taxes and any politician that has the courage and audacity to speak the truth is in peril. (Alabama’s current Governor, Bob Riley (R) lived to prove that it is possible to have a political life after proposing a tax increase, but he has a rare amount of courage in my humble estimation.)

Hence, it is difficult to make progress in any meaningful way. Progress on one front means another is neglected. And yet there is progress in an unplanned plodding kind of way

Although a debate rages on as to whether Birmingham needs a new downtown domed stadium, this is a metro area that can’t even get the lights burning on the freeway system! Mayors have made promises about fixing our darkened byways ever since I have lived here and nothing ever happens. Whole sections of the freeway have no lights as all levels of government show that they are totally incompetent in solving this most complex of urban problems facing the 21st Century American city: changing light bulbs.

The state is mismanaged and under taxed and its antiquated 1910 Constitution gives local authorities little discretion in solving their financial problems. This inability to solve local problems is no more evident than in the U.S. Highway 280 corridor. The highway is the proverbial “golden goose” of Birmingham’s economic development, and it is literally being strangled to death by traffic. The 280 corridor has witnessed a boom in commercial, retail, and residential construction that has overwhelmed the six-lane commercial strip with grinding traffic. This strip of highway has become an unplanned overbuilt jumble and is as ugly as it is dysfunctional…. and still the developers build more…. while the politicians wring their hands and commission another study. Urban planners commit suicide after looking at 280. .

The highway runs through seven competing jurisdictions, and their cutthroat competition for sales tax revenue and unwillingness to control growth have made this an area to avoid for sane motorists. There’s nothing like crawling along behind giant SUVs with W stickers on them contemplating the exhilaration and freedom of the open road. The willing residents who live along 280 have no alternative routes to get to the CBD, and if the tolled, double-decked section is ever built, this future “improvement” will promise staggering traffic disruption as it is built. Oh well, as one local Realtor told me in downplaying the dreadful traffic on 280, “It’s no worse than Atlanta”.

I’ll let that speak for itself!

Not that any real improvement for 280 is actually in the planning stage…. The latest proposal is to double deck the highway from the end of the current commercial development into the central city. This plan has run into opposition from the wealthy suburb of Mountain Brook as it would probably be ugly and especially problematic for 30 or 40 large/mansion homeowners as well as other more modest homeowners who were allowed to build to closely to such a major arterial (see lack of planning). Traffic planners, in their infinite wisdom are now going to end the double-decking before it reaches the borders of Mountain Brook. If built as proposed, the double decking of 280 would attract more traffic, more pollution, and more noise…. all lifted 30 feet higher into the sky. It is a difficult problem that will have to be dealt with at some point. It does not appear that point has been reached as of this writing.

The city of Birmingham survived the loss of most of its white middle class by the shrewd stewardship and long-running tenure of the city’s first black mayor, Richard Arrington. Arrington made peace with the white business establishment and embarked on an aggressive annexation campaign that long-lassoed some of the most desirable commercial properties along the booming Highway 280 corridor. These include the wildly successful Summit, a lifestyle shopping center (essentially an upscale, heavily landscaped strip mall), a Target SuperCenter, and two struggling yet potentially successful older shopping centers, The recently remodeled Colonnade and Brook Highland, a somewhat forlorn shopping center in a perfect location.

These smart annexations were coupled with an aggressive defense of the central business district. There are currently more than 80,000 people working in the extended downtown… more than ever before in the 130-year history of the city. Unfortunately, this healthy employment base has not translated into a vibrant downtown: there is no significant retailing downtown, the department stores are long gone, and the streetscape is dominated by commercial property. The downtown is devoid of pedestrian traffic after dark.

Operation New Birmingham, a joint local operation has been very successful in rescuing literally hundreds of vacant downtown buildings and finding new uses for them. Birmingham has managed to avoid the curse of Charlotte (whole scale demolition the old CBD). As law firms and architectural design firms have moved into the small and medium sized buildings, work is now in progress on some of the largest abandoned buildings. A wonderful old 1920s skyscraper, the City Federal Savings & Loan is going condo. Similarly, there if hope that the long abandoned Thomas Jefferson Hotel will burst forth in all of its terra cotta beauty reincarnated as the Leer Tower, another condominium development.

There are few middle class residents in the city center, however, several hundred residential lofts have been constructed in the last few years and city officials are hopeful that these urban pioneers will be the vanguard of revitalization. The recent demolition of the huge, crime-infested Metropolitan Gardens public housing project and its replacement with a mixed-income, federally subsidized Hope VI housing development (Park Place) may augur well for Birmingham’s central business district. Nothing helps a downtown more than removing 900 crime and drug infested public housing units and replacing it with 580 units that are composed of 1/3 carefully vetted poor people and 2/3 market rate (that means middle class) apartments!

The Wealthy Neighborhoods of Birmingham in the Higley 1000

There are nine Higley 1000 neighborhoods in Birmingham: Two in the city, three in Birmingham’s premier upscale suburb of Mountain Brook, and four standard issue gated suburban fortresses.

Forest Park and Redmont Park: Birmingham’s Two Elegant City Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Forest Park
View Larger Map of Redmont Park

Forest Park and Redmont Park are urban neighborhoods on the city’s commonly called the “Southside”. They were both developed in the early 20th Century (1914 and 1925 respectively) and have flourished in the last twenty years. Forest Park suffered through the 1960s and 1970s only to return to its former glory through gentrification in the 1980s and 1990s. Redmont Park has some of Birmingham’s grandest mansions peering down on the city from Red Mountain, a steep 350 foot tall ridge that overlooks the city below. Both Redmont Park and Forest Park are very small with a few hundred homes each. They are also noteworthy in that in spite of the fact that the central city is 75% Black, they are even Whiter than the suburbs! Along with the contiguous gentrified neighborhood of Highland Park, these three neighborhoods are the only upscale places left in the central city.

Mountain Brook: The Tiny Kingdom

Mountain Brook is a large suburb with about 22,000 pure White residents. Local wags refer to it as “The Tiny Kingdom” due to its insular culture and social dominance.

I have carved out three “neighborhoods” out of the wealthiest sections of the city. Two of these neighborhoods are centered and named after the two towering institutions of social prominence in Birmingham, the Mountain Brook Club and The Country Club of Birmingham. The third neighborhood in Mountain Brook I have dubbed Mountain Brook Estates-Canterbury. Mountain Brook Estates was really the start of this gilded suburb in the unfortuitous year of 1929. For statistical purposes I have joined it with the adjacent neighborhood of Canterbury.

Mountain Brook’s Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

Mountain Brook Estates-Canterbury

View Larger Map of Mountain Brook Estates - Canterbury

The Country Club of Birmingham

View Larger Map of The Country Club of Birmingham
The Mountain Brook Club-Shook Hill
View Larger Map

Mountain Brook, without question, is the place where Birmingham’s upper class lives along with a good portion of the metro area’s upper-middle class. Few wealthy suburbs in the United States command such a disproportinate majority of a metro areas wealthy and influential families. Mountain Brook has more than 80% of Birmingham’s Social Register families and anyone with a shred of social aspiration must live within its golden boundaries. It is a world apart from the crime infested streets of Birmingham and its genteel forested streets and clubs are truly a kingdom unto themselves.The Mountain Brook public school system is rated the highest in the state, and the suburb unquestionably has the largest number of Birmingham’s movers and shakers. It is home to the aformentioned blue-blooded Mountain Brook Club and the The Country Club of Birmingham as well as the social matrix of clubs and social alliances associated with the wealthy. The social system is difficult to break into in Mountain Brook unless one has a sterling pedigree. If you’re an internet entrepreneur from Boston… forget it… move to Greystone or Liberty Park. Nouveau riche households abound, but don’t hold your breath for an invitation to join the Mountain Brook Club!

As mentioned previously, Mountain Brook is incredibly white. Not one of the 62 African-Americans that lived in Mountain Brook in the 2000 Census was a householder. Hmmmmm. I guess they would mostly be live-in servants.

Greystone and Liberty Park

Greystone and Liberty Park are similar in that they are relatively new, gated master-planned communities centered on golf courses. They are both unusually large in scope and have developed neighborhoods with distinctly different price points. Of the two, Greystone has a wider range of single family houses ($200,000 to $3,000,000). Liberty Park is uniformly more expensive although it has a high end rental complex that is carefully segregated from the expensive single family homes. Each of these developments will have close to 3,000 housing units when complete, and a majority of those homes will be worth more than $500,000.

Greystone

View Larger Map of Greystone
Greystone is part of the suburb of Hoover, a large (70,000) and aggressively pro-growth suburb with the state’s third best school system. Located at the southern end of the 280 corridor, Greystone has been extremely successful in spite of worsening transportation problems associated with 280. I drew the boundaries for Greystone to include only the three high income gated sub-neighborhoods for the Higley 1000: two country club themed neighborhoods and a third (Greystone Ridge) with multi-million dollar view estates. There are hundreds of many more downscale houses available in Greystone…. houses as low as $200,000! Would that buy a pool house in Greenwich?

Liberty Park

View Larger Map of Liberty Park

The second gated community in the Higley 1000 is called Liberty Park. If you can get past the hokey replica of the Statue of Liberty, this master planned community is located on a lovely patch of rolling wooded land that is ideal for beautiful homes. Liberty Park is part of Vestavia Hills, Birmingham’s second wealthiest suburb (after Mountain Brook) and its second highest rated school system. Vestavia Hills is a large (30,000) overwhelmingly white upper-middle class suburb with one exception, the recently annexed lower-middle class community of Cahaba Heights. The architecture of Cahaba Heights is unremitting expanses of dreadful post-war ranches. Cahaba Heights has a perfectly central location in the metro area and the physical environment is beautiful…. can you say TEARDOWN!?

The addition of Cahaba Heights to the corporate limits of Vestavia gave the city a geographic link to Liberty Park formerly a non-contiguous isolated piece of development. But that’s another story…..

Highland Lakes

View Larger Map of Highland Lakes

Highland Lakes, is a very large gated community located out the 280 corridor in the rolling Appalachian foothills south of the city. Highland Lakes is a planned development where every house essentially looks the same. The “lakes” are dammed (damned?)narrow valleys in the Appalachian foothills. As a native of Wisconsin, I can say with full-throated condescension, these puddles are only “lakes” in a developer’s dream! Highland Lakes is solely residential and will ultimately be home to thousands of people that live in a monument to Stepfordian socio-economic and Republican homogeneity.

Shoal Creek-Stonegate

View Larger Map of Shoal Creek and Stonegate

The final Higley 1000 neighborhood is Shoal Creek, another gated golf community and the adjacent newly constructed gated community of Stonegate. After more than twenty years of development, only about 90 of the 230 large wooded lots in Shoal Creek have had houses constructed on them. The development includes suburban Shelby County’s answer to Versailles, an over-the-top 45,000 square foot (empty) chateau built by a local entrepreneur. I think it’s visible from space. Years ago, Shoal Creek’s golf course gained some unwanted national attention when the PGA threatened to cancel a golf tournament at the club unless it was integrated. A token Black guy was recruited, given a membership, and the PGA was happy. The Club was technically integrated and the tournament proceeded. The token Black guy reported in a recent newspaper article that he was treated well at the club, but, unfortunately he died recently. Never fear though for Shoal Creek’s integration they have found another Black guy to replace him that doesn’t caddy or mow the fairways.

The Village of Mount Laurel

Although not a Higley 1000 neighborhood, there is one newly developing community that merits mentioning. If you’re a fan of New Urbanist design principles, Mt. Laurel is a planned community in the middle stages of development on the far urban fringe of the metro area. Yes, suburban fringe, auto dependent New Urbanist design is a oxymoron, but it’s pretty. The question I would havd for the developers of Mt. Laurel is: when you jettison any pretension at having a mixed income community and build on the auto dependent fringe, can you still call yourself “New Urbanist”? Sales have been slow in spite of a charming and unusual design aesthetic. The general consensus is that it’s a bit pricey.. and no more than a cute architectural conceit for the upper-middle class.

Homewood: Birmingham’s Coolest Suburb

And finally, a word about one of my favorite of Birmingham’s suburbs, Homewood. Ideally located in the metro area, Homewood is a predominately lower-middle class suburb adjacent to Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills. Most of Homewood is made up of well-maintained bungalows and small homes and it has a significant number of rental apartments. Thanks to a strong sales tax base, Homewood has managed to maintain a good school system and has continued to attract young families that have turned vast tracts of forgettable bungalows into beautifully remodeled houses in tidy wooded neighborhoods.

Homewood has two very interesting upscale neighborhoods: Mayfair & Hollywood. Hollywood has a wonderful collection of stuccoed, flat roofed houses built in the 1920s that have been remodeled for the the 21st Century. I love Hollywood: great architecture and a great location. Mayfair is more traditional, with its rolling, heavily wooded landscape, it share’s Hollywood’s ideal location for getting anywhere in Birmingham.

In Summary….

Birmingham is a very interesting town with a wide array of housing choices. This is but the first of my essays on Birmingham. After all, it has been my home town for 12 years and as an Urban Geographer, I have much to say about my adopted home. It is my fervent hope that I will be able to use my web site to express my critical thinking about the metro area.. something that is woefully absent from the boosterism so characteristic of what one finds published locally. The Birmingham News, an achingly Conservative newspaper does a fairly good job of covering the city but sounds like a the local arm of the Chamber of Commerce when covering the suburbs. I hope that my website counters the flackery and drivel that passes for journalism about the suburbs of our fair metro area.

The Catalina Foothills Landscape

Modernist Architecture in the Catalina Foothills:

The ten Higley 1000 neighborhoods found in Tucson are quite small as they represent sub-divisions built by individual developers. There are only 2,484 households in the ten neighborhoods, each one approximately 1/3 as large as the typical Higley 1000 neighborhood found in the rest of the country. Eight of the ten neighborhoods and almost 90% of the households are found in the Catalina Foothills.

There are two historic neighborhoods found in the geographic heart of the central city. This pair of adjacent subdivisions were platted in 1928 when the city was a small Western city of 32,506 residents (1930 Census). The much larger and newer grouping of eight Catalina Foothill neighborhoods are found in a series of mostly gated communities along the highest elevations of the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains to the north of the city, often shortened to “The Catalinas” in local parlance.

The foothills north of the Tucson city limits encompass 100.1 square miles of unincorporated suburban sprawl that is differentiated solely by socio-economic status. The Census Bureau has divided this suburban area into three distinct unincorporated suburban entities that are called Census Designated Places (or CDPs): Casas Adobes, Catalina Foothills, and Tanque Verde. Together, the three CDPs have 123,900 people according to the 2000 Census. This large concentration of upper-middle and lower-middle class households is vociferously against annexation by the City of Tucson and equally resistant to incorporation. All services are provided by Pima County.

The Racial Makeup of Tucson and the Ten Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

The metro area has two dominant racial groups: Latino (32.5% of households, 2000 Census) and Non-Hispanic Whites (58.1%) plus small but notable populations of Native Americans (3.4%), African-Americans (3.1%) and Asians (2.4%). The racial makeup of the “best” neighborhoods have little minority representation. 90.3% of the households in the ten Tucson Higley 1000 neighborhoods are non-Hispanic White, which is similar to all Higley 1000 neighborhoods (91.0%).

Latinos represent a mere 5.4% of the households in these wealthiest of Tucson neighborhoods. Although this is significantly higher percentage than Latino representation in the entire Higley 1000 (2.2%), it seems relatively small considering the significant Latino population that is found in the metro area and City of Tucson (36.5% Latino).

As is typical of the pattern found throughout the United States, Asians are represented in Tucson’s wealthiest neighborhoods at above average numbers than the United States as a whole (3.3% vs 2.7%). However, this is significantly less than the percentage of Asian households in all Higley 1000 neighborhoods (4.8%).

There are virtually no Blacks (.5% of all households) or Native-Americans (.4%) in Tucson’s elite neighborhoods.

The Census Bureau’s geographic division of the metro area has made an accurate accounting of Tucson’s wealthy neighborhoods very difficult. The Block Groups are clumsily mapped and do not follow the mandate of the Census Bureau to isolate neighborhoods of similar socio-economic makeup. The end result is that I have had to estimate the mean household income for each of the ten Higley 1000 neighborhoods found in the greater Tucson area. I estimate mean household income by comparing statistics such as real estate prices and median age as well as speaking to local realtors (always an invaluable resource!).

In the case of Tucson I drove by or through all ten neighborhoods on my last two visits to the metro area to give each neighborhood a “windshield survey”. I was able to tabulate accurate racial statistics by adding up the totals for each race and each neighborhood on a block by block basis using 2000 Census Block data. The bottom line is that the mean household income statistics are estimates, the racial statistics are exact.

Map of Colonia Solana and El Encanto Estates: Two Historical Neighborhoods “on the Flats”
View Larger Map of El Encanto Estates and Colonia Solana

Colonia Solana and El Encanto Estates were developed east of the city’s boundaries in 1928 next to the El Conquistador Hotel, a posh tourist destination during the first half of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, the hotel was torn down in 1969 to make way for the El Con Mall. The El Con Mall’s day in the sun was short and today it is mostly abandoned, losing it’s last anchor (Macy’s) in 2007. The best description of these two neighborhoods is found in Virginia and Lee McAlester’s wonderful Book, “A Field Guide to America’s Historic Neighborhoods and Museum Houses: The Western States”, (Knopf 1998). “This contrasting pair of Eclectic-era subdivisions, both opened in 1928, provide a fascinating lesson in the crucial role that landscape and streetscape play in neighborhood ambiance. Both subdivisions offered irregular lots, curvilinear streets, and dense vegetation, and both suffered the slowdown in development that came with the 1930’s depression and Second World War. Individual houses in both run the stylistic gamut from late 1920s period houses to 1950s Ranch-style houses to a scattering of new construction. Most of these, including the Ranch houses, display some Neo-Hispanic detailing. The two developments thus share similar house designs and street layouts, yet are startlingly different because of their landscaping.

Colonia Solana is an exquisite, and perhaps unique neighborhoods in which you feel as if you have driven directly into the surrounding desert and stumbled upon a few scattered houses. There is no street paving, no curbs, and no gutters. A line of rocks is used to delineate the boundary between road and yard. A natural arroyo running through the neighbhorhood has been left undisturbed. There are no “lawns” in the conventional sense. Instead, the neighborhood contains the fascinating native plants of the surrounding Sonoran Desert”.

“Adjacent to the north is El Encanto Estates, less unusual but also charming. Here the curved streets and irregular lots are arranged in a symmetrical bull’s-eye pattern, a type favored by those designing early -Twentieth Century geometric neighborhoods. Although much native vegetation is used, the neighborhood is dominated by majestic imported palm trees, which accent the formal curve of the streets.”

Both of these ungated neighborhoods are small. I counted 144 houses in El Encanto Estates and 121 in Colonia Solana. Located in the middle of the city, neither has the spectacular views that are available in the foothills to the north. In spite of being located next to a dead mall and some dicey neighborhoods, it appears as if these two islands of wealth have managed to maintain their unique desirability. The houses for sale in both neighborhooods as of June 2008 were generally in the $700,000 to $1,500,000 range.

The Catalina Foothills: Gated Wealth

There are eight Higley 1000 neighborhoods nestled up against the Catalina Mountains. The foothills provide breathtaking vistas of the city to the south and the mountains to the north. All of the wealthiest neighborhoods are found in the central section of the foothills that the Census calls the Catalina Foothills. Casas Adobes to the west is considered Tucson’s first suburb and is predominately lower-middle class. Tanque Verde, a mixture of lower and upper middle class households to the east, is less developed, more open, and in general has lower real estate values than the central foothill area The first elite subdivisions in the Catalina Foothills were layed out by an ambitious Tucson developer by the name of John Murphey in the early 1930s. He called his development Catalina Foothills Estates and the 10 additions he constructed eventually encompassed 1,600 homes that are still represented by a homeowner association to this day. The subdivisions were planned with large lots (three acres or more are common) to maximize privacy. Two of Murphey’s subdivisions are found in the Higley 1000: Numbers 9 & 10. Catalina Foothills Estates #9 has been lumped in with several adjacent newer subdivisions in the Higley 1000, notably the The Foothills I and The Foothills II developments.

Catalina Foothills Estates #10 is a hidden gated community located south of the Westin La Paloma Resort between Hacienda del Sol Road and Pontatoc Road. The original 10 subdivisions are sometimes referred to as “Old” Catalina.

Map of the Catalina Foothills’ Higley 1000 Neighborhoods
View Larger Map of the Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in Catalina Foothills

Touring the wealthiest neighborhoods of the Foothills is difficult because most are gated. Fortunately with the sparse desert landscape and the aid of Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth, it is easy to view the million dollar homes with the million dollar views. The architecture of all of these neighborhoods is essentially the same: sprawling single story modern houses that often have neo-Hispanic architectural motifs. Architectural Review Boards of Homeowner Associations reign supreme in these neighborhoods and the architecture is relentlessly similar.

The amount one pays for a home in these neighborhoods is directly related to one factor above all else: The View. El Encanto Estates and Colonia Solonia on the flats of the central city are 2,500 feet above sea level. The houses at the loftiest elevations of the various foothill neighborhoods are found in the 3,000 to 3,400 foot range. The highest peak to the north in the Catalina Mountains is Mt. Lemmon, at 9,157 feet above sea level.

One of the interesting aspects of some of the foothill neighborhoods is the mixing of house types. Unlike most Higley 1000 neighborhoods, one finds patio homes, townhouses, and condominiums interspersed among the single family homes. The Skyline Country Club has a wide assortment of condominiums and patio homes. I have artfully drawn this neighborhood to exclude these lower income units. I have done the same with the lovely neighborhood of Rancho Sin Vacas by drawing the boundaries to include the estate homes but exclude the assisted living facility and multi-unit housing.

I have included Tucson’s newest luxury gated development, Pima Canyon Estates with the adjacent Rancho Sin Vacas. At the time of the 2000 Census, this neighborhood was just being built and there were few households to be counted. However, with 298 lots that start at $700,000, this neighborhood will definitely become part of the 2010 Census update of the Higley 1000.

The two gated communities with some of the most impressive homes, Cobblestone and The Canyons are relatively small and difficult to photograph. I was able to snap this shot of one of the peripheral houses in The Canyons from outside the walls.

The Canyons, Catalina Foothills

One of the few neighborhoods in the foothills that is not gated is Alta Vista Estates. During my recent visit to Tucson I took several good pictures of the homes in this neighborhood. The pictures below should give one and idea of the foothills landscape and the type of architecture found throughout all ten neighborhoods.

A Typical Home in Alta Vista Estates

Alta Vista Estates, #2

Skyline Bel Aire Estates - My Sensational Tucson Headquarters

I have the fortune of having two wonderful friends that live in the Skyline Bel Aire Estates subdivision in the Catalina Foothills. It has been my base of operation as I have explored the beautiful neighborhoods of the Foothills. Skyline Bel Aire Estates is one of the older neighborhoods in the upper Foothills, having originally been built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. With a mean household income of $97,895, it is not close to making the Higley 1000 (the minimum mean income is approximately $185,000). However, this desirable neighborhoods has many beautiful houses and the neighborhood is in the midst of slowly being gentrified due to its wonderful views and excellent location.

Asian-Americans are still very over-represented in the Elite 100 with 4.3% of the households versus 2.7% of the total households in the United States. Although African-Americans only makeup 1.1% of the Higley 1000 households, they makeup only .7% of the Elite 100. As I have questioned repeatedly on my site, where are the wealthy Black households? They made up 11.7% of all American households in the 2000 Census and 4.4% of the households making over $200,000, yet there representation in the best neighborhoods is negligible.

Hispanic-American’s have about the same percentage (2.2%) of households in the Elite 100 as the Higley 1000. The Cubans that were found in the 3 Miami neighborhoods (Fisher Island, Coco Plum, and Snapper Creek Lakes-Hammock Lakes) represented 30.6% of all Hispanic-Americans found in the Elite 100.

The Elite 100 is surprisingly diverse in terms of the number of metro areas represented on the list. No less than 28 Metro areas have their “best” neighborhoods on the list, although many of them (13) only have one place. As in the list of 1000 neighborhoods, New York City dominates the Elite 100 with 31 neighborhoods or small villages. There are 16 in the state of New York, 8 in Connecticut, and 7 in New Jersey for a total of 31% of the Elite 100. Chicago is a distant second with 11 neighborhoods on the list, while Washington DC has 8 (6 in Maryland and 2 in Virginia). The one oddity is the fact that the San Francisco metro area is so poorly represented in the top 100 (Atherton and Pacific Heights). There are 64 Higley 1000 neighborhoods in San Francisco and the second 100 has no fewer than 6 San Francisco places: Kentfield, Hillsborough, Woodside, Portola Valley, Sanders Ranch, and Diablo.

When defining the type of neighborhood it is best to think of a continuum as some neighborhoods are difficult to assess on a national scale. As an example what is “traditional” or “nouveau riche” in Florida? With some equivocation I have adjudged that Seventy-five of the 100 are what I would call traditional upper class suburbs.

The richest neighborhood in the United States is the lush Holmby Hills neighborhood just west of the Los Angeles Country Club in the so-called Platinum Triangle (along with Beverly Hills and Bel Air). This small neighborhoods has some of the most gargantuan houses in the United States including Candy Spelling’s 60,000 square foot mansion.

The second richest neighborhood in the United States is located in Denver’s lush Cherry Hills Village. I have named this collection of upscale sub-divisions Buell Mansion-Cherry Hills Park after two of this Block Group’s most luxurious developments. Cherry Hills Village is typical of the Western United States in that it is hard to categorize. It is a combination of old wealth and the uber-mansions of the nouveau riche.

The second and third richest neighborhoods in the Higley 1000, North Greenwich-Round Hill, and The Indian Hill Club-Woodley Road area located in Southern Winnetka, are older and very traditional. They exhibit the mature landscaping on carefully screened acreage typical of this type of neighborhood. Each of these neighborhoods have exceptionally large new homes that are interspersed among the equally large older homes.

Twenty-two can be classified as nouveau riche such as Potomac Manor-Potomac Falls Estates outside of DC or the claustrophobic Old Shepard Place in Plano, Texas (possibly the most unpleasant wealthy sub-division in the United States). Twelve of the top 100 are gated communities. Almost all gated communities are by definition nouveau riche, although there are exceptions such as The Highlands outside of Seattle and, Belle Terre, a waterfront gated traditional neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. An excellent example of a nouveau riche neighborhood is Coco Plum-Gables Estates. The Block Group that makes up this “neighborhood” is actually a series of gated communities along Biscayne Bay that also include Old Cutler Bay, Journey’s End, and Hammock Oaks. I don’t really know if “gated” is the term to use for Fisher Island, but I guess it fits if you consider that it is private and not open to the public (you need a boat for access).

There are only four neighborhoods in the Elite 100 that are located in central cities: Midtown Manhattan, Pacific Heights in San Francisco, Washington Park in Seattle, and the Westernmost part of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia.

As I have made clear in my methodology section, mean income as collected by the Census Bureau has many flaws (realistically a household can’t claim more the $2 million in income), however, I doubt that any observer would question the end result of my research as the communities that represent their metro area are widely acclaimed as the pinnacle of residential success. River Oaks in Houston, Cherry Hills Village in Denver, and Tuxedo Park (a section of Buckhead in Atlanta) are good examples of the best places to live in there respective metro areas.

Here’s is the entire Elite 100 list and their racial make-up. If you are interested in a particular Metro area click on “Neighborhood Summary by Metro Area” on the right side of the this page.

You can quickly search for your neighborhood within that page by using the Find feature of your web browser, usually by typing <Control>-F. Enter the name of the neighborhood you are seeking, and Find will quickly search the entire list on the web page. If you don’t see your neighborhood, you can look for others in your area by searching for your State or County.

Good luck, and have fun!  Steve Higley

Indianapolis’ best neighborhoods are very segregated. When one compares the racial make-up of Indianapolis’ highest income neighborhoods with the racial make-up of the entire Metro area, there is an glaring lack of Black households found in the wealthy neighborhoods. Asians and Non-Hispanic Whites are greatly over-represented. This is a common pattern that is found throughout the country and the big industrial cities of the Midwest are no exception.

The Metro are is primarily Non-Hispanic White and Black (82.9% and 13.2% respectively). Asians (1.0%) and Hispanics (1.7%) were found in small numbers in the metro area. (2000 Census) The six Higley 1000 neighborhoods are 91.3% Non-Hispanic White, 4.1% Black, 3.0% Asian, and 1.2% Hispanic.

From Meridian-Kessler to the Village of WestClay

I never tire of driving up Meridian Street in the city and viewing all the wonderful mansions that were built in the city’s industrial heyday. They are typical of their period: Eclectic, Georgian, and Tudor Revivals amidst countless variations of bourgeois good taste.

This trip I wanted to see just if the adjoining North-South streets of Illinois and Pennsylvania (and the lower 40’s) of Washington Boulevard were equally beautiful and well maintained as the big houses on Indianapolis’ Alpha Street, Meridian Street. The adjacent North-South arterials are lovely and for the most part, nicely maintained. The quality of the neighborhood falls off rather quickly past Illinois to the West and Washington to the East, but it is clear that many of Indianapolis’ elite still want to live in the neighborhood that has been christened Meridian-Kessler. I made Meridian-Kessler a Higley Designated Place as the elite homes are strewn across several Census Tracts and too many Block Groups to make any sense of the mean income numbers. The wealth of the area is obscured by the inclusion of downscale houses and apartment buildings in the Census Tracts and Block Groups on the East and West sides of the rather narrow strip of elite homes running North from 40th Street to 56th Street centered on Meridian.

One of the more unusual tiny enclaves of old wealth in Indianapolis is the 40 house enclave of Golden Hill. Golden Hill was developed in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century and has working class homes immediately to it’s east and south. Somehow, this island of wealth has managed to maintain its cache and is still a lovely neighborhood. Like Crows Nest and North Crows Nest (18 Households; Population 42, LOL),Golden Hill is to small to register on the Higley 1000, but none-the-less it is certainly worth a quick drive through if you are interested in historic neighborhoods.

On this trip I did not visit the tiny, most elite of Indianapolis’ suburbs, the aforementioned Crows Nest. When the city merged with Marion County in the early 70s, a bevy of small and micro suburbs retained their identity and enough autonomy that the Census enumerates them separately from Indianapolis. Crows Nest is one those tiny enclaves. Crows Nest consists of a mere 34 households, found primarily along Sunset Lane. This is where one finds the truly impressive mansions of Indy’s elite residing in baronial splendor. With a mean income of $248,705, Crows Nest would come in at 238th in the Higley 1000, if it was big enough to qualify for the list (a suburb or neighborhood has to have at least 50 households to qualify for the Higley 1000). The sampling procedure that the Census Bureau uses for income (one of every six households) means one has to take the Mean Household Income statistics of tiny places like Crows Nest with a grain of salt. In the case of Crows Nest, the Mean Household Income would be drawn from 5 households! If one of those five households were live-in servants (with separate housekeeping facilities), it would skew the mean income statistics hopelessly downwards. Considering the size of the homes, my bet is that there is live-in help and therefore the income numbers are useless. Oh well, it is an imperfect world!

Further North on Meridian, between 64th and 82nd Streets are two newer elite suburbs that share the same semi-autonomous status as Crows Nest. Meridian Hills straddles Meridian Street and is filled with commodious ranches, forgettable architecture and an occasional teardown. Meridian Hills mean household income of $154, 832 was too low to qualify for the Higley 1000. Meridian Hills is upper-middle class and pleasant enough, but rather uninspiring compared to the grand mansions of Meridian Street to the South!

The tiny village of Williams Creek found just north of Meridian Hills ranks #298 on the Higley 1000 (at this writing). Williams Creek appears to be simply an incorporated sub-division. With a household count of 155, Williams Creek just made the cut in qualifying for my list (minimum 150). Most of the homes appear to be post-World War II and they are uniformly large and lovely.

I snapped this picture of what has to be the biggest lawn in Williams Creek. The cross hatching design of the mowing of this lawn was wonderful! Click the picture for a full size view

I didn’t get a chance to drive by Lake Kesslerwood and its smaller sibling Lake Charlevoix (Higley 1000 #532) on this trip. From Microsoft Live Local it appears that the approximately 200 homes built around appears to be a man-made lake diverted from the White River. Lake Kesslerwood-Lake Charlevoix is the only neighborhood in Indianapolis where African-Americans households are found proportionately as they are in the Metro area in general.

In the tradition of Homer Hoyt’s pioneering studies in the 30s, Indianapolis’ sector and wedge growth for elite homes has moved North on the Meridian axis across the Hamilton County line into the nouveau riche suburb of Carmel and it’s subordinate township of Clay.

Carmel had 37,802 people in the 2000 Census and Clay Township had an additional 26,907 residents. The Census estimated that as of 2005 Carmel had grown strongly to an estimated 59,243 (Census estimate, 2005). A good portion of Carmel’s growth can be attributed to annexing a large chunk of the Northwest section of Clay Township. Clay Township has correspondingly lost population over the last five years to an estimated 19,147. Carmel and Clay Township together account for the vast majority of the new McMansions in Indy’s suburbs. Carmel is geographically boxed off with Zionsville to the West, Westfield and Noblesville to the North. To the East, Carmel is geographically hemmed in by the exploding lower-middle class sub-divisions of Fishers. It makes sense for the city to annex West and eventually take in all of Clay Township.

At this writing, the Southwest corner of Clay Township maintains its independence. There is one Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the township: Crooked Stick Golf Course-Winterwood (Mean Household Income:$221, 914). Twin Lakes-Laurelwood (Mean Income: 182,915) was close, but no cigar. Both of these “neighborhoods” are collections of sub-divisions.

The Crooked Stick-Winterwood neighborhood is a combination of sub-divisions around the Crooked Stick Golf Course (e.g. Crooked Stick Estates, Spring Run Estates, Sutton Place, & Huntington Chase) as well as the the smaller but more exclusive gated neighborhoods of Winterwood and Estancia to the East.
I drove into the tiny ungated neighborhood of the Queens Manor and snapped this impressively fountained arriviste mansion. The lots are huge and the houses ranged from the pictured monument to wealth (left), to more prosaic large, run-of-the-mill houses found in anywhere upper middle Class America.

The other Higley 1000 neighborhood found in unincorporated Clay County I dubbed Twin Lakes-Laurelwood (Mean Household Income $182,915). This neighborhood was was named for the Twin Lakes Golf Course to the west of this block group and Laurelwood on the eastern edge. Laurelwood is gated filled with large homes and is similar to the equally impressive gated community of Coppergate found in the Block Group that statistically makes up this neighborhood.

The Northwest quadrant of Clay Township that Carmel recently annexed has a plethora of standard issue upper middle class sub-divisions such as Hayden Run and Laurel Lakes.

The wealthiest neighborhood in Indianapolis as reported in the 2000 Census was part of Clay Township at the time of the Census. It is now part of the city of Carmel. I have dubbed this neighborhood Claridge Farms-Springmill Ridge after two of the larger sub-divisions of this area. With an Median household income of $267,013, it is the wealthiest Block Group in the Indianapolis metro area.

In my opinion, the most ambitious and interesting new addition to Carmel is the large master planned community of the Village of WestClay (yes, that’s the affected way the developers spell it…). It appears to be built in the popular “New Urbanist” tradition although when these places are planned and built on the further reaches of the suburban sprawl frontier, I don’t know just how “New Urbanist” the developers can actually claim to be.

The Village of WestClay, which didn’t exist when the 2000 Census was taken, appears to be a rather dense and intensely planned affair. Visit their website by clicking here: Village of WestClay. I found some very interesting and unique architecture in one of WestClay’s many sub-divisions.

Here is a picture wonderfully thought out, brand new Painted Lady from one of WestClay’s brand new sub-divisions. This is a wonderful way for history to repeat itself!

A large majority of Detroit’s upper and upper-middle class has long since decamped for Oakland County centered on the four suburbs of Birmingham, Bloomfield Township, West Bloomfield Township, and Bloomfield Hills. the Southern third of Bloomfield Hills is the wealthiest Block Group in the entire Detroit metro area with a mean household income of $386,591.

Grosse Pointe is actually made up of five separately incorporated suburbs that together are 12 square miles and technically made up of 4 cities and one village. Each of the cities has a slightly different personality and although they all have separate small shopping areas (except Grosse Pointe Shores), “The Village” in Grosse Pointe acts as the downtown for all five of the burghs. (Wikipedia) Together they had 47,752 residents in the 2000 Census. Their collective population had declined to 44,995 as estimated by the Census Bureau in 2006. Population decline in fully developed older suburbs adjacent to the central city is often found in similar places across the United States.

The Grosse Pointes population decline is exacerbated by the city of Detroit’s ongoing demographic and socio-economic collapse. The city’s population was once a mighty 1,850,000 in 1950, however by the 2000 Census the population had plunged to 951,000. The population has continued to plummet since the last Census. In 2006, the Census estimated the city’s population at approximately 834,000.The city is still hemorrhaging people at the rate of as many as 20,000 people a year. The number of abandoned housing units in the city has climbed from 38,668 to 85,951 in six years (2000-2006). This is a statistic that is mind boggling for its social and economic ramifications.

The mass exodus of middle class Non-Hispanic Whites has been followed by a similar, albeit smaller exodus of middle class Black households. There were a mere 357 (out of 37,798 in the Metro area) Non-Hispanic White households in the city of Detroit reporting an income of over $200,000 in the 2000 Census. This compared to 2,565 Black households in the central city with an income over $200,000. There were a total of 4,176 African-American households in that income bracket for the entire metro area, therefore the central city has retained 61% of the wealthiest Black households in the Metro area (Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area). There are very few Non-Hispanic Whites left to flee the city. In a short 6 year period (2000-2006), the Census estimates that the Non-Hispanic White population (of all classes) declined from 99,921 to 68,883. Non-Hispanic Whites were estimated to make up only 8.3% of Detroit’s entire population.

As non-Hispanic White families have fled the city proper, they have left some of Detroit’s most lovely historic neighborhoods to be rescued from creeping blight by Detroit’s wealthy professional nouveaux riche Black households. Nestled around the elegant Detroit Golf Club on the North Side of the city are Palmer Woods (mean household income: $133,894), Sherwood Forest ($107,559) and 125 houses around the perimeter of the Detroit Golf Club ($156,928). These three neighborhoods of beautiful houses were 78.7% African-American in 2000. However, it is important to remember that the three areas are relatively small (568 households) and combined have only 116 of Detroit’s African-American households earning over $200,000.

For the truly adventurous there is Indian Village located among the ruins of East Detroit. Indian Village is a 6 by 3 block architectural gem of a neighborhood that was originally served by streetcars. The eclectic mixture of large mansions and houses of lesser ambition are on city-sized lots in a wide array architectural styles. The prices for these Grande Dames of Gilded Age gentility would make a San Franciscan cry as unfortunately, this lovely compact neighborhood is surrounded on all sides by some very mean streets. This problem is somewhat mitigated by a pro-active Indian Village Homeowners Association that has hired its own security. The mean household income for Indian Village in 2000 was $99,381. The neighborhood of approximately 350 homes is 64.4% African-American.

The five neighborhoods of Grosse Pointe that are in the Higley 1000 makeup only 13% of the households in Detroit’s 25 neighborhoods that are on the list. Eighty-six percent of the Higley 1000 households are located in Oakland County. The only place on the list that is in the Detroit Metro area that is neither in the Birmingham-Bloomfield sector nor Grosse Pointe is the tiny village of Barton Hills (population: 335) that is located just north of Ann Arbor.

The Mean Household Income in the 2000 Census for the Grosse Pointes together was $118,541. Like any large suburban area there are pockets of great wealth nestled next to comfortable upper-middle class neighborhoods. Many spectacular mansions that were remnants of Detroit’s halcyon day of past have been torn down, but there are still thousands of older beautiful homes across all five villages. One can also find many a lower-middle class neighborhood throughout the five villages.

The Greater Grosse Pointe area has historically remained highly segregated with 95.6% of the households in the 2000 Census in the Non-Hispanic White racial category. Only 1% of the households were African-American. That is in stark contrast to the city of Detroit (83% Black) that geographically adjoins the Pointes to the west. The drive from Detroit into Grosse Pointe Park along Kercheval Avenue is a stark experience of passing from Black inner-city impoverishment to comfortable White upper-middle class life. After a few blocks of transition, Nottingham Drive announces a different world of suburban affluence. My only personal experience that rivaled this jarring socio-economic juxtaposition (and in an even more stark way) was driving from Newark into South Orange, New Jersey.

Map of Grosse Pointe Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in Grosse Pointe

There are Higley 1000 neighborhoods in four of the the five Grosse Pointes. Grosse Pointe Woods is the only Grosse Pointe without a representative neighborhood on the list. The five Higley 1000 neighborhoods are as segregated as the lesser parts of Grosse Pointe. Together the five Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the Grosse Pointe area were 95.2% Non-Hispanic White and a mere .7% African-American. When one factors servant households into the equation (see the Methodology section), there are very few Black households in any of Grosse Pointe’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

This pattern of racial segregation is nothing new in the industrial Midwest. It is a continuation of the racial geographical pattern found throughout this part of the United States. Segregation is equally entrenched in Chicago and Milwaukee as in Detroit. It has been characteristic of the Detroit metro area since the great African-American Northern migration began in the Twenties. The Detroit metro area has regularly topped Massey’s Index of Dissimilarity, a statistical way to measure Black/White segregation. In short, Detroit has always been highly segregated.

In the spring of 1960, a civil court suit unexpectedly shed light on how the real estate market operated in Grosse Pointe. The trial revealed that there was a screening system in effect in the Grosse Pointes that required real estate brokers to submit the name of a potential property purchase to the Grosse Pointe Property Owners Association. The Association then engaged a private detective to fill out an investigative questionnaire. As was written in the pamphlet Rights, a publication of the Anti-defamation League of B’nai B’rith ( N. Braverman, 1960), “The filled out questionnaire was then turned over by the Association to a committee of brokers which totaled up the scored points and sent it back to the Association. They made the final evaluation as to whether or not the prospective buyer had made a passing grade.” Out of a maximum of 100 points, a passing grade was based on a sliding scale for different nationalities; “Poles would pass with 55 points, Southern Europeans with 75, Jews with 85.” Negroes and “Orientals” were not even eligible; their disqualification was automatic.” The point system considered such details as whether the prospective buyer was “American” or “Americanized,” if his occupation was typical of his own race, or if either the Mr. or Mrs. was “swarthy” in appearance or spoke with an accent. The private detective was also asked to find out about the prospective buyer’s reputation and how the outside and inside of his previous home was maintained.” (How this was determined without being a peeping tom was not in the court record!). “There was a question as to whether the buyer dressed “neat” or “slovenly;” and “conservative” or “flashy.” The trial e